Famous Sometime Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Sometime poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sometime poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sometime poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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That Day you came

by Lizette Woodworth Reese
 Such special sweetness was about
 That day God sent you here,
I knew the lavender was out,
 And it was mid of year.

Their common way the great winds blew,
 The ships sailed out to sea;
Yet ere that day was spent I knew
 Mine own had come to me.

As after song some snatch of tune
 Lurks still in grass or bough,
So,...Read more of this...

The Lyttel Boy

by Eugene Field
 Sometime there ben a lyttel boy
That wolde not renne and play,
And helpless like that little tyke
Ben allwais in the way.
"Goe, make you merrie with the rest,"
His weary moder cried;
But with a frown he catcht her gown
And hong untill her side.

That boy did love his moder well,
Which spake him faire, I ween;
He loved to stand and hold her hand
And ken...Read more of this...

In Faith

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When the soft sweet wind o' the south went by, 
I dwelt in the light of a dark brown eye; 
And out where the robin sang his song, 
We lived and loved, while the days were long.

In the sweet, sweet eves, when the moon swung high, 
We wandered under the starry sky; 
Or sat in the porch, and the...Read more of this...

Sonnet 41: Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits

by William Shakespeare
 Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won;
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
Ay me, but yet thou mightst my...Read more of this...

Dedication To Christina G. Rossetti

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Songs light as these may sound, though deep and strong
The heart spake through them, scarce should hope to please
Ears tuned to strains of loftier thoughts than throng
Songs light as these.

Yet grace may set their sometime doubt at ease,
Nor need their too rash reverence fear to wrong
The shrine it serves at and the hope it sees.

For childlike loves and laughters...Read more of this...

Satire II:The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 MY mother's maids, when they did sew and spin, 
They sang sometime a song of the field mouse, 
That for because her livelood was but thin [livelihood] 
Would needs go seek her townish sister's house. 
She thought herself endured to much pain: 
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse 
That when the furrows swimmed with the rain...Read more of this...

All Thats Not Love . .

by Alan Seeger
 All that's not love is the dearth of my days, 
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, 
The temple in times without prayer, without praise, 
The altar unset and the candle unlit. 


Let me survive not the lovable sway 
Of early desire, nor see when it goes 
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, 
Whence sometime sweet...Read more of this...

An Evangelists Wife

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Why am I not myself these many days,
You ask? And have you nothing more to ask? 
I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise 
To God for giving you me to share your task? 

“Jealous—of Her? Because her cheeks are pink,
And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven. 
If you should only steal an hour...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXIV: When I Have Seen by Times Fell Hand Defacd

by William Shakespeare
 When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen...Read more of this...

Shall I compare thee to a summers day? (Sonnet 18 XVIII)

by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not...Read more of this...

Il Penseroso

by John Milton
 Hence, vain deluding Joys,
............The brood of Folly without father bred!
How little you bested
............Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
............And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
............As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
............The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But, hail! thou Goddess sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage...Read more of this...

Special Pleading

by Sidney Lanier
 Time, hurry my Love to me:
Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.
He called thee `Sometime'. Change it, friend:
`Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time...Read more of this...

O We Are The Outcasts

by Charles Bukowski
 ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
P O E T R Y .

if it doesn't come, coax it out with a 
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.

keep it coming like a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms
with their...Read more of this...

It would never be Common -- more -- I said

by Emily Dickinson
 It would never be Common -- more -- I said --
Difference -- had begun --
Many a bitterness -- had been --
But that old sort -- was done --

Or -- if it sometime -- showed -- as 'twill --
Upon the Downiest -- Morn --
Such bliss -- had I -- for all the years --
'Twould give an Easier -- pain --

I'd...Read more of this...

Tar

by C K Williams
 The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, 
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to 
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble 
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening...Read more of this...

On The Sea

by John Keats
 It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and...Read more of this...

The Eve of Crecy

by William Morris
 Gold on her head, and gold on her feet, 
And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet, 
And a golden girdle round my sweet;
Ah! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite.

Margaret's maids are fair to see, 
Freshly dress'd and pleasantly; 
Margaret's hair falls down to her knee;
Ah! qu'elle est belle La Marguerite.

If I were rich I would kiss her feet;
I...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXIV

by William Shakespeare
 When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen...Read more of this...

Be Not Weary

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Sometimes, when I am toil-worn and aweary,
And tired out with working long and well,
And earth is dark, and skies above are dreary,
And heart and soul are all too sick to tell,
These words have come to me like angel fingers
Pressing the spirit's eyelids down in sleep,
'Oh let us not be weary in well doing,
For in due season we shall surely...Read more of this...

Death

by Thomas Hood
 It is not death, that sometime in a sigh 
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight; 
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply 
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night; 
That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite, 
And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow; 
That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite 
Be...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXV

by William Shakespeare
 So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIV: I Hear Some Say

by Michael Drayton
 I hear some say, "This man is not in love." 
"What? Can he love? A likely thing," they say; 
"Read but his verse, and it will easily prove." 
O judge not rashly, gentle Sir, I pray. 
Because I trifle loosely in this sort, 
As one that fain his sorrows would beguile, 
You now suppose me all this time in...Read more of this...

Why Washington Retreated

by Ellis Parker Butler
 1775

Said Congress to George Washington:
 “To set this country free,
You’ll have to whip the Britishers
 And chase them o’er the sea.”
“Oh, very well,” said Washington,
 “I’ll do the best I can.
I’ll slam and bang those Britishers
 And whip them to a man.”

1777

Said Congress to George Washington:
 “The people all complain;
Why don’t you fight? You but retreat
 And then retreat...Read more of this...

From Sunset to Star Rise

by Christina Rossetti
 Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not: 
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, 
A silly sheep benighted from the fold, 
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. 
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, 
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; 
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, 
Athirst and hungering on...Read more of this...

Virginibus Puerisque . .

by Alan Seeger
 I care not that one listen if he lives 
For aught but life's romance, nor puts above 
All life's necessities the need to love, 
Nor counts his greatest wealth what Beauty gives. 
But sometime on an afternoon in spring, 
When dandelions dot the fields with gold, 
And under rustling shade a few weeks old 
'Tis sweet to stroll and...Read more of this...

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